name.”
“Lucrezia.”
I said the name without thinking, the name of the woman he mentioned in his diary.
Becquer frowned and, as I blushed under his dark stare, he sighed. “You read my diary.”
“Only the first page. Rachel wanted me to read it to prove Cesar was real, although you had denied it. She thought you might mention him in your diary.”
“Did she read it too?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Nothing happened between us.”
“Rachel or Lucrezia?”
“I meant Rachel. As for Lucrezia — ”
“You don’t owe me an explanation.”
He smiled ruefully. “Come,” he asked me and when following his suggestion I sat by his side, he took my hand. “Yes. I have to tell you about Lucrezia. But I fear that when I do, I’ll lose your respect. And your love.”
“Because you still love her?”
“No, Carla. I don’t love her. That’s not why. I’m afraid that you’ll think poorly of me because I’m ashamed of who I was and how I lived my life when I was human.”
“You were Becquer, when you were human. Gustavo Adolfo Becquer. How can you be ashamed? You’re admired, adored by legions of fans that have read your poetry, your legends, your letters.”
Becquer laughed. “My fans, as you call them, do not love me. They love the myth I created after my death. My so-called death, anyway. During my life, I was an unknown, a failure as a writer, a dilettante of sorts, working clerk jobs I couldn’t keep, writing pieces for newspapers, articles nobody read, searching all the time for that elusive perfect nirvana Lucrezia gave me when I was a child.”
“So you loved her back then?”
“If you call that love. What I felt for her was more like an addiction, a disease that stole my soul and poisoned my mind. And because in my ignorance I called that love, I spent my life searching for the intangible — a silver moon ray, a pair of green eyes, the impossible I could never have.”
“Did Lucrezia love you?”
“I doubt Lucrezia was capable of love. Besides, I was eleven when I met her, a boy still grieving the death of his mother. How could she love me? I was her human pet, nothing more. Later, maybe she coveted my young body and the adoration she saw in my eyes. And so for a while, we were lovers drinking in each other: me in her beauty, she in the glow of my love for her.
“Until one day, she left me, without explanation, without saying goodbye. I spent the rest of my life longing for her, while she in turn took me as her lover or rejected me, only to taunt me again when I fell in love with someone else.
“And, all the time, Cesar watched us — either jealous or amused, I do not know — biding his time to avenge himself for the few moments of bliss Lucrezia gave me.”
“Cesar? The same Cesar who ordered you to kill yourself?”
“The very same. Cesar was Lucrezia’s lover and her brother. In life and after death.”
Of course. Cesar was Cesar Borgia, Federico had told me. Which made Lucrezia the infamously beautiful Lucrezia Borgia.
“Cesar made her immortal against the Elder’s wishes,” Becquer explained. “Apart from beauty, she had no merits of her own. She was not artistically, nor scientifically gifted, and thus by the Elder’s rules, she did not qualify to become immortal. But Alexander, the Elders’ leader, loved Cesar at the time and allowed Cesar’s defiance to go unchallenged. Eventually Alexander moved on to other lovers, and Cesar continued his affair with Lucrezia. They were still together when I met her in Sevilla.”
“Is that why he hates you? Because once upon a time you and Lucrezia were lovers?”
“He hates me because Lucrezia made me an immortal against his wishes and, in his wrath at her defiance, Cesar killed her. He blames me for his actions.”
“If you knew he hates you, how could you believe him when he told you the Elders had sentenced you to death?”
“He believed me because I said the truth,” A deep, sarcastic voice answered from the door.
Letting go of my hands, Becquer leaned forward, his body tense as if preparing for a fight. A fight he couldn’t win, even if he were not bedridden, because the man standing by the door, dark and beautiful like an angel fallen from grace, was Cesar.
And Cesar was immortal.
Chapter Twenty: Cesar
“The Elders want you dead,” the man said in heavily accented English as he stepped into the room. “I should know for I am one of them.”
“You want me dead, Cesar, not the Elders. Their sentence was to make me mortal.”
“And so you are, my dear Gustavo, quite mortal indeed. Unfortunately, mortals have a nasty habit of dying and so it is that a sentence to be mortal is equivalent, in my opinion, to one of death.”
With a speed that would have betrayed him as being immortal had I not already known, Cesar reached his side then turned to me. “But I see you have company,” he said, appraising me. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
“You must leave.” Where Cesar’s voice had been sarcastic, Becquer’s was cold. “The Elders are aware that you manipulated me, bending their sentence with your lies so I would agree to end my life. If I die today, they will hold you responsible. And if you hurt Carla, I will haunt you for all eternity.”
Cesar laughed. “Would you really haunt me for all eternity? How poetic. But, of course, you always had a way with words. While I was more of a man of action. As for your lady, Carla did you say?” He turned again to me. “I’m Cesar. Cesar Borgia, at your service.”
Grabbing my hand, he bent to kiss it. The chivalrous gesture an ominous sign, a warning that he set the rules.
Becquer swore and yanked the IV tubing from his arm. I held my breath, expecting the alarm to go off. But it didn’t. The numbers in the machine were frozen, which meant we had once more stepped out of time. Nobody would come to help us now. Which really made no difference as no human would stand a chance against an immortal. At the thought, the fear inside me grew exponentially.
Unlike me, Becquer didn’t seem surprised when his action had no effect. His eyes on Cesar, he ordered him to leave once more.
Cesar nodded. “I will,” he said as if he meant it. “As soon as you confirm that you’ll keep your promise to take your own life before Monday.”
“I won’t. You lied to me, Cesar, which means my word is not binding, for it was given under a false premise.”
“Isn’t it?” A triumphant smile curved Cesar’s pale lips as he turned toward the door. “Now you believe me? Now you believe your reluctant sire is an oath breaker?”
At Cesar’s words, a second visitor materialized by the door. It was Beatriz, I realized, as she glided forward and came to stand by Becquer’s side.
I took a step back for nothing human remained in her face, the beautiful face of a vengeful goddess. But Becquer, unperturbed as though he had expected her, returned her stare.
Gracefully, Beatriz sat on his bed and bent forward until their faces almost touched. When she spoke, her perfectly modulated voice was that of a lover. But her words were not of love.
“And what excuse do you have to break the oath you gave to me?” she asked him.
“I did not break my oath to you.” Becquer’s voice was even and, although not loud, it broke the intimacy she had established between them. And so it was Cesar who answered. “No. You didn’t. You sent your lap dog to do it in your stead.”
